Come Quick it's a GIveaway & My Purchases

The first two people to join our blog and leave their e-mail address in the comment section will receive a copy of my Write the Room Pack that covers all kinds of blends, digraphs, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more.

Here are just a few things I picked up at the TPT sale today. 

  Reagan Tunstall

 

Krista Wallden

 

and

last but not least

By  Katie at Teacher to The Core

If you would like to buy any of these units while they are still on sale just click the picture and it will take you straight to the TPT sale. 

 

~Alison

 

A Smelling Test, a Confession and a Freebie

 We kicked off our week with a little SMELLING TEST !  I posted a little while back that several of my students were still struggling with the idea that there is a th at the end of "with" and not a F. So I came up with this little lesson: 

(Confession Thank God for Clip Art-I Can't Draw a Straight Line) 

First we talked about the meaning of "Whiff" seriously when I was younger we said things like "Did you get a whiff of that?"  all the time.   Huh, my little kiddos had never heard of such a word!  So these little guys could understand the meaning of  "whiff" a little better we had a smelling test.  I prepared eight bags with eight different "smells" in them.  Ex:  lemon, chocolate, onion, etc.  I cut the bags to about 2/3 their original size, put the item in, and stapled the bag once in the middle so that the air would flow when students squeezed the bag.  Then it was off to Whiffing and Sniffing to see if  these kiddos could pass their smelling test. 

Results of Spelling Test A+!  Well maybe not an A+ but they did do a great job!!!! 

Once our test were graded it was off to write the room!  Students used their clip boards, magnifying glasses, and write the room activity sheets to find all the words in the room that had wh or th.  If you would like a copy of  my write the room activites that are on sale you can find them  here.

Alright if you made it all the way to the end you deserve a special Cyber Monday Treat!  I will send a copy of  the  50 Write the Room activities to the first two people who leave a comment with their e-mail address and start following our blog.   

 

Happy Monday!

~Alison

New Write the Room Activities

I don't know about you but I am super excited for Cyber Monday! I just added a Write the Room pack to my (itty bitty) tpt shop.....
 
 

 
 

I have so many units I made before I started blogging that just need some finishing touches before adding them to my shop. I am more excited about prioritizing the 57 items I have in my shopping cart at TPT. I'll fill you in on my top purchases when I get that figured out. Now off to set up my first SALE! Here are a few other items to check out. My TPT button does work so you can click on any picture to go to my store.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

                                                             ~Alison

Thankful Thoughts, My First Linky Party

I am  thankful for so many things in life!  First I am thankful for my amazing family......

I am so blessed to have such an amazing husband and three healthy children.  Life is Good!

 

 I am also thankful for my mom and dad.  Almost three years ago my dad went into the hospital the day after Christams and was immediately scheduled for  quadruple bypass surgery and valve replacement.  After about 6 months  of hospitals and doctors offices he slowly returned to his usual and crazy self.  I am thankful I have had three more years with him in my life. 

 

I am also thankful for those who put their lives on the line each and every day so that we can live in a free country. 

The Wounded Warrior project is an oranization that helps our military when they return home after sacrificing so much more than time away from their families.  If you would like to support this cause please click the picture above to be taken to the WW website. 

 

Last but not least I am thankful to work with six other amazing first grade teachers and title gals too!  We respect each others individual teaching styles, take care of each other in times of trouble, and give and take equally.  

 

One of those great gals is my blog partner Caroline.  If you have been following you know she has been MIA.  Well here's why ........

 

Caroline delivered a sweet baby boy about 5 weeks early due to issues with preclampsia.  The sweet LITTLE bundle that was born at 3 pounds 9 ounces is now at home and doing well and we are so thankful.

 

Well friends I am sure I could go on and on forever but those are the top 5 things that make me ever so thankful!

 

There's still time to link up with Lindsay and share your thankful thoughts.

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving Break Everyone!

~Alison

Turkey Fact Family Craftivity Freebie

WHOA!  Does anyone else feel like they need to grab the reins to slow the train that is quickly approaching Christmas down? We have been super busy in first grade with so many special activities and with Thanksgiving falling earlier this year I feel like I haven't had the time to commit to the topic of Thanksgiving like I usually do.  Here is one of  the activities we did manage to squeeze in .....

A FACT FAMILY OF FEATHERS

This was such an amazingly fun activity for many reasons.  One because when I whipped out this art project those kiddos started singing the praises of having the best teacher ever and two because they enjoyed making their turkeys so much my otherwise chatty class fell completely silent as they took to their creating. 

During the month of November our PLC  decided to focus on fact families, thus this little fact family guy was created. This is the first year for PLC's at my school.  During our meetings we have been working  on tweaking our math curriculum.    If you would like to squeeze in a little more turkey time this week you can pick up a copy of the FREE template here. (I had trouble getting this uploaded so it currently doesn't have a preview)  You can still download it but will have to choose download anyway if you want to download it now.  I will try and get it fixed tomorrow)  I tried google docs and TPT.  Sorry Friends!

 As we have worked in our committee we have scoured blogs , as well as TPTand found so many fabulous fact family ideas.   Here are just a few. ........

 Did you know that there are 161 items that come up under the category Fact Families, FREE?

 

Well friends hold on and get ready for another busy week!

~Alison

Must Have Book Fair Books & a Chevron Freebie

Does this ever happen to you?  You log on and say I'm going to give myself 15 minutes to do a little "Blog Stalking" and then an hour later you still haven't made your own post?  Well, it just happened to me AGAIN!  So... now on with my post.....

This past week we had the Scholastic Book Fair at our school with more books than I have EVER seen.  Here are a few books you must have in your classroom library....

                                                                                                        OH MY GOSH IT'S "HOGWASH"  This book is hillarious,  it's about a farmer who wants to..... of all things give his pigs A BATH.  It has rhyme, it has humor and BOY IS IT LOADED WITH NEW VOCABULARY WORDS! 

 

The "Three Billy Goats Fluff" has to be my newest  favorite spoof on a fairy tale; this story is amazingly clever!  As the story goes... the old troll is up to his usual BULLYING SELF when momma goat knits some nice booties for the goats so they won't disturb him and his booming headache.  Momm goat also knits up some ear muff and a blanket for the old troll.  Mommas can always save the day can't they??

                                                                                                  CALLING ALL TEACHERS TEACHING WRITING!!!!!  AH, that's everyone I hope.   Rocket Writes a story is the best book yet for encouraging young writers that they can write a story.  I will have more on this book in a future post. 

Ok, so now that I feel like I've filled in for LeVar Burton on an Episode of Reading Rainbow here's your freebie a packet of Black and White Editable Chevron Labels. 

Enjoy

~Alison

REAL OWL CLASSROOM WOW???????

What an amazing week we had learning about OWLS!   Last Tuesday Greg from the local Wildlife Refuge  came to share his knowledge of owls with us.

Greg discussed with the students  owl habitats, features, and hunting habits, as well as an owls diet. Which led us straight into........  Yep.......the dissection of owl pellets.      I have to admit if I would have thought about it for very long I would have probably made myself sick but the kids were SOOO SUPER excited about finding out what those owls ate I didn't even think twice about the magnitude of gross in which I was participating .


Here students worked on dissecting and sorting bones into categories. 

The following day the "Owl Lady" as we call her came to visit.  Bev is the owner of a local shelter that rehabilitates injured animals.  You can learn more about her shelter here. 

Bev has such a passion for her animals, she kept our first graders intrigued for 50 minutes as she talked about the screech owl, barn owl, barred owl, short eared owl, and great horned owl. 

Bev has been coming to our school for years to share her love for owls with us.  I look forward to her visit year after year.  To finish up our unit on owls each student wrote a book of owl facts and completed the cutest owl art project. The kiddos had no problem completing there owl facts book.  They are now owl experts after learning about owls for a week and a half.   

We also had all kinds of fun with the activities here......

We may not have a zoo in our small town but we do have many great resources for learning. 

~Alison